reignofevil, what I'm saying is that Parson could call himself duke of Gobwin Knob and the title is just as meaningless as calling himself Lord, because it is just a title. It's specials and ranks, designations, types, or whatever you want to call it , that effect stats and are important. He could declare himself a heavy unit (which obviously he wouldn't, he's big enough as it is) and he would be the Chief Warlord, who is is a heavy unit, not Heavy chief Warlord.

One thing that bothers me is that we know how valuable casters are, yet the attacking side made seemingly no effort to capture them. Nor have many other sides from what we've seen. The RCC was all too willing to attempt to croak Sizemore, Jetstone's planned treaty involved 'possibly' croaking Wanda (an ATTUNED caster) and in this battle we had a Predictamancer and Luckamancer, units that would at least seem to be valuable even among generally valuable casters, wiped out. Is it that the upkeep is so high that sides generally don't capture casters despite their value? Is there some other reason we don't know about that sides aren't doing much capturing of units? I know it's hard to break the loyalty but it is eventually possible.

I think it's a combination of a couple of things. The first one is that it is much harder to capture than croak, unless you have some kind of special like the Megalogriws or the Dwagons. Just look at what happened to Larry as he tried to capture Wanda; had he just tried to kill her, he likely does. This seemed like a surprise strike where they never wanted to give their enemy a chance to regain balance. Simply killing everything outright makes that easier to accomplish.

I think the second does relate to upkeep; most sides seem to have at least three casters, but very few we have seen go above that number, and they were all big sides.

Lastly, they were both low level adept class. My bet is that a master class or a higher level caster might have been captured, but level 3/4 units are pretty easy to create. Just look at how fast Wanda leveled.

One thing that bothers me is that we know how valuable casters are, yet the attacking side made seemingly no effort to capture them. Nor have many other sides from what we've seen.

To Balerions points I would add that the RCC Sides (or at the least Jetstone), seem to be highly prejudiced against Croakamancers. Note the pejoratives Ansom used to describe both Wanda and her works. Witch, abomination, etc. It's not hard to extrapolate, in a system where some natural allies will not work for you if you have certain other natural allies also working for you, that some sides will never randomly pop some specific caster types, and won't be terribly interested in capturing or turning them, either.

_________________How using capslock wins arguments:

Zeroberon wrote:

So we know with 100% certainty that THIS IS HOW TRI-LINKS WORK, PERIOD END OF STORY.

It goes beyond just Jetstone. Goodminton was not happy with the idea of Croakamancy, and Father never was able to look at his uncroaked son. There is a sense of morality in Erfworld, and the desecration of a body is against it for many. Ansom had a special hate for it, but I don't think we saw anyone else from Jetstone with that level of hate

Certain natural allies did not get along, eg royal side like Jetstone with elves would have trouble getting goblins, witches, etc as allies.

Some elves had *healing* type abilities. Possible witches, or others may have a bit of natural magic in uncroak sphere. A kingdom that favours one sort may naturally dislike the other. Possible the kingdom/leaders can have intrinsic bonus that pushes to one type.

Also, captured units may have pretty low loyalty and duty unless you can turnamancer them. I suspect it may be a pretty big risk to have captured casters be critical to your operation.

Maybe that suspicion will be proven wrong if we see the Olive-Wanda interaction post-capture, but I can understand overlords deciding not to risk 1) Letting someone into the thick of your units2) Who has good reason to hate you3) And who is a super-powerful unit (caster).

Of course, it's a high-risk high-reward thing, having extra casters would be great... but will it come back and bite you?

_________________For those in the USA: Have you wondered what you would do during in the civil rights movement, or in the 1930s?

Well, what did you do yesterday? Now you know.

Let's all be the kind of people we wish everyone had been then. Show up. Call. Resist.

I can understand sides not wanting a croakamancer, but we've seen them just as unwilling to capture a dirtamancer, predictamancer, and luckamancer.

In fact, the only side we've seen that was eager to capture casters is... Stanley. Maybe he's not as much of an idiot as he seems, sometimes. Or capturing casters is a bad idea for reasons we haven't yet had discovered. (edit.. I said 'disclosed' lol, tired)

He did come up with the eyemancer linkup idea too. (As far as we know anyway)

For loyalty, I think turned units work like captured units (people, cities, planets, etc) in games where loyalty is a concern - they start off with a low loyalty and gradually build it up over time. Otherwise, captured units would always be essentially useless.

So you'd probably start off giving them nonessential but important tasks, make them feel like part of a side that appreciates them, cater to their strengths, etc, but also keep an eye on them and make sure they don't have a chance to screw you over, or to mitigate any damage they may do if it does happen.

I think a turnamancer just speeds up the process so they can be trusted sooner. So Jillian will be able to use and trust those captured units, and put them in positions where she won't have to worry about them wrecking her side or losing an essential battle on purpose.

A lot of this post is speculation. I'm not claiming it is how things actually work.

I can understand sides not wanting a croakamancer, but we've seen them just as unwilling to capture a dirtamancer, predictamancer, and luckamancer.

In fact, the only side we've seen that was eager to capture casters is... Stanley. Maybe he's not as much of an idiot as he seems, sometimes. Or capturing casters is a bad idea for reasons we haven't yet had discovered. (edit.. I said 'disclosed' lol, tired)

He did come up with the eyemancer linkup idea too. (As far as we know anyway)

We can't be 100% sure what happened to Delphie capturing might look the same as death; she stops being a unit under Wanda's control either way. Or it might look different. We defenitly have no clue what happened to Clay, he was already gone. He may have turned or gotten captured. They couldn't capture Sizemore since if he beat them instead it would be GG in the tunnels for Jetstone, and they weren't assured of victory over him. (And in fact, they did lose to him)

Also I do think Stanley is smarter than your average overlord. Which is really, really sad.

One thing that bothers me is that we know how valuable casters are, yet the attacking side made seemingly no effort to capture them. Nor have many other sides from what we've seen. The RCC was all too willing to attempt to croak Sizemore, Jetstone's planned treaty involved 'possibly' croaking Wanda (an ATTUNED caster) and in this battle we had a Predictamancer and Luckamancer, units that would at least seem to be valuable even among generally valuable casters, wiped out. Is it that the upkeep is so high that sides generally don't capture casters despite their value? Is there some other reason we don't know about that sides aren't doing much capturing of units? I know it's hard to break the loyalty but it is eventually possible.

Okay, so maybe I'm bored. It seems like a valid point though.

Remember, captured units do have infamously low loyalty. While casters are valuable enough that they're often captured, that's also a reason for people to want to croak them.

On top of this, they probably have an upkeep appropriate to their power. Not everyone can afford capturing a new caster.

Lamech wrote:

Also I do think Stanley is smarter than your average overlord. Which is really, really sad.

I think that Stanley is really, really good at short-term tactics, but terrible at overarching strategy. Things like "capture valuable assets" come to him as naturally as breathing (remember, he did rise to leadership based on his own merits -- IIRC he was already at least a Warlord by the time he found the Arkenhammer, and he started out as a pikeman.) He looks buffoonish to us because we've mostly seen him in roles he's not particularly suitable for, but there are clearly some things he's very good at -- every indication is that he was an extremely competent Warlord.

But his biggest weakness is that he has terrible personnel management skills.

(He also seems to know this, on some level -- part of his frustration and the reason he lashes out is because he's frustrated that he's now too valuable to risk and has to sit uselessly in his castle. That's also why he was so willing to abandon ship, I think -- ultimately, he prefers being on the field, since that's what he's made for and that's what he's good at.)

In fact, the only side we've seen that was eager to capture casters is... Stanley. Maybe he's not as much of an idiot as he seems, sometimes. Or capturing casters is a bad idea for reasons we haven't yet had discovered.He did come up with the eyemancer linkup idea too. (As far as we know anyway)

Stanley has depths that the simple label of 'idiot' cannot convey. Stanley was said by Wanda, who is lately and pretty much our caster protagonist, to have been the shrewdest move she had seen in his creation of the eyemancer link. This does call into question Stanley's idiocy WRT magic, as an idiot should not have been able to suggest a shrewd strategic maneuver such as the eyemancer link. Wanda or one of the other casters should have been able to suggest the link, and given Stanley's idiocy it should have been a fight to convince him of the value of the link, rather than Stanley calling for the link on his own.

_________________How using capslock wins arguments:

Zeroberon wrote:

So we know with 100% certainty that THIS IS HOW TRI-LINKS WORK, PERIOD END OF STORY.

Hi, all! Does anyone know if we're in a break between chapters where we should expect no updates for awhile? Sorry to ask - I'm not usually one to fret about the update schedule. I just didn't know if there was a shoutout I'd missed about some kind of hiatus.

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